Chloë Grace Moretz has joined the cast of director Luca Guadagnino’s remake of Dario Argento’s 1977 film Suspiria, Variety reports. Tilda Swinton, Dakota Johnson, and Mia Goth were already on board, but Moretz’s addition earned the film a greenlight; it will begin shooting this month in Italy and Hungary.
The original film, written by Argento and Daria Nicolodi, starred Jessica Harper as an American ballet student who discovers a murderous supernatural conspiracy at the prestigious German ballet school she is attending. It’s a classic of Italian horror, as well known for its vivid colors as its plot. Argento went so far as to have Technicolor IB prints made in the film’s initial release, a process that produces extraordinarily bright reds but was already rare by 1977. It will be interesting to see how Guadagnino handles the challenge of an Argento-like color scheme in the age of DCPs. His 2009 film I Am Love was vividly colored—but it was also released on film.
Variety’s story lists no fewer than eight producers and four executive producers, which speaks to the length of time a Suspiria remake has been in the works. In 2003, Dimension Films took a stab at it, hiring Shadow of the Vampire writer Steven Katz to write a screenplay. That went nowhere, and Guadagnino acquired the rights in 2007 through his production company First Star Films, but by the time the project neared production, he wasn’t attached as a director. Instead, in 2012 he hired David Gordon Green, who wrote a script with Chris Gebert; this version would have starred Isabelle Fuhrman. Now David Kajganich—who wrote Guadagnino’s A Bigger Splash—is writing a version Guadagnino will finally direct himself.
As of yet no details on who is playing which part have been released. More importantly, though, the director hasn’t yet commented on the single most important question about any Suspiria remake. Will the first 92 minutes be as terrifying as the last 12?
